Martha
by Marlowe97
Summary: In Pete's World, Rose is curious about the Doctor's companions (Set after "Force yourself to choose")


„Why don't you like to talk about Martha?"

They were sitting on their small balcony, looking over the rows of yards and gardens beneath them, the sun shining and warming their bellies. It was still spring, only late April, and the rays weren't strong enough to create real, true heat so they both wore warm, comfortable jumpers and Rose had a woolly blanket over her legs. She'd propped them up on the railing and wished for summer to begin, or at least for a chance to travel somewhere warmer.

Which was daft. They would only be able to travel to France or Spain or maybe Chile, and while that was exciting in a way, it wasn't _really_ what she meant when she thought about 'travelling'.

"Hm?" her Doctor hummed from her side, buried in the book he was reading. He'd started the 'Harry Copper'-series a week back and was determined to find out how it differed from the other one, in the other universe. She had to admit, he was infectious with the little happy noises whenever this universe's JK Rowling managed to surprise him. Maybe Rose should read it as well.

Not right now, though. This question had been dancing on her mind for a while, and now it seemed the time was right to ask it. Since their unplanned adventure in Cardiff and more recently, London, they'd grown much tighter and grown _up_ in ways she'd nearly given up on before. It was starting to become domestic. Rose wasn't entirely sure she liked it. It felt like restraints, though still loads better than non-domestic adventures without a Doctor by her side.

"Martha. Remember her? The Doctor's companion?" She still wasn't completely sure what to call him, though it seemed that he'd come to terms with carrying the name of someone who was him, and wasn't him at all. She still sometimes tried other names, names just for him, but everything mundane like 'James' or 'Steve' just didn't fit him, and fancy names like 'Alexander' or 'Maurice' were simply ridiculous. Her latest attempt had been to use endearments, but after she'd called him 'sweetheart' and he'd laughed himself silly, she had stopped that as well and was for now sticking to 'Doctor'.

He didn't seem to mind.

She envied Donna, for having an actual nickname for him and for the beaming smile Donna was treated with whenever she called him 'spaceman'. Rose didn't have a nickname for him. He'd always just been 'Doctor'.

Didn't mean she loved him less, of course – in fact it seemed she was beginning to love him even more, impossible as it sounded. But she had to admit that she was jealous of Donna and the time he spent with her, the effortless companionship the two shared and the … well, she'd say desperation he threw himself into every aspect of Donna's life, even while trying to hold himself back with the same desperation so he wouldn't come across as … desperate.

With Donna, the Doctor seemed to glow and whatever they did, even the most boring things, were incredibly fascinating for him. With Rose, though, there were rows and fights and disagreements and a lot of hard-won compromises. When she was with them, Rose sometimes felt like she was watching from the outside, a poor kid staring through the windows into a happy family-scene in a house impossible for her to ever enter. Like that girl from the Andersen-fairy-tale, with the matches. She tried not to, and in fairness there was no obvious exclusion of her and he always looked really sad whenever Rose couldn't make it to their weekly dates-with-Donna. Still. It irked and rankled and made her grow wary and sort of … jealous. There wasn't really a better word for it.

He put the book down and looked at her. "Of course I remember Martha. Why do you think I wouldn't?" He frowned. "What do you mean 'I don't talk about her'?"

She bit her lip and chewed on it a little. "It's just… when you tell me about adventures the Doctor had in the time where I was… stuck here and he wasn't, you always talk about the ones you had with Donna. I mean he. He had with Donna. And I just wonder… what's wrong with Martha? Wasn't she… good?"

His hands wiped over his face and wandered into his hair. He still had a patch of shorter hair where she had bashed him with a rock, even though the scar wasn't visible anymore. There were still faint outlines on his wrists, though, and Rose hated the reminder of how close she'd come to lose him, twice, just so shortly after finally getting him to be _with_ her.

"Well," he said, clearly disturbed. "Well, I never realized that I don't talk about Martha. But no, no, there is nothing wrong with her. Nothing at all. Quite the opposite! She was… is? Should be, I think," he pondered, frowned and looked deeply unhappy upon realizing that he didn't know more about it than Rose would, or anyone human. Rose wondered if it would ever stop bothering him. "She's fantastic." He smiled. "Yes, really, truly fantastic. I met – well." He made a face. "He. He met her in the hospital where she was working as a medical student. She's a doctor now. A proper doctor!" His pride was evident, and Rose smiled in answer and for the gleam on his face as he said 'proper'. It was so unbelievably enticing to see him – and that included him and the parallel Doctor – beam at whatever caught his fancy.

"Yeah? What was he doing in the hospital?"

"Oh, there was stuff going on, plasma-expulsions and then the hospital got scooped up with a plasma-scoop… Well. Just. You know. Typical day in the office, really." He grinned and in the beginning of their time together, it would have been more of a frown. Back then, he'd have hurt at the reminder of the 'office' in question, but it had gotten a lot better these last two weeks. As if he'd accepted it now. Well. That was one possible reason for his change. The other would mean he'd have found a Tardis, and she was pretty certain he hadn't. For one, he wouldn't have been able to stop bouncing, Rose thought with a little smile.

"Anyway. She was there, and she was _beautiful_." His voice trailed off in memory. Other women might have gotten quite jealous at that far-away smile he had now, but Rose knew him enough – well, knew the Doctor enough – to understand that for him, beauty wasn't a purely physical aspect of a person, nor was it bound to himself. He saw people – or machines, or robots – as beautiful even when they hated him, were trying to kill him or destroy a planet. For the Doctor, beauty was a concept of mind and intellect, of construction and cleverness and design. If Rose hadn't met Martha, even if only briefly, she wouldn't have necessarily imagined her to be beautiful in the human, physical sense.

She was, though, Rose would say. Very beautiful.

"Sense of adventure, such compassion! So smart, and brave and curious. Fantastic running-legs. Saved my life more than any other companion, I'd say…" again he trailed off. "Come to think of it, that hadn't been a good year for me. Him. Us. Could have died right there at the hospital, and quite a lot of times later. Huh."

Rose grabbed his hand and swept her thumb over his knuckles. She didn't know if she wanted to reassure him or herself, but did it matter? "So, why not talk about her then?"

Sighing, he looked down at their hands and smiled. "Well, I hadn't noticed that I don't. Definitely not deliberate. It's just … she's … well." He stopped again and put the book down to the ground so he could think better. After a while of silence, he continued. "There could be more than one reason. Maybe because deep down, I feel that I made a big mistake with her, hurt her, even though I don't and can't and won't ever regret the time with her. The other is that, well. You're here, we have shared memories, so I don't really need to speak about you to you. Do I?" he winked and gave her a cheeky little smirk. "And Donna. Well. What with Donna..." He blinked and Rose saw his eyes grow glassy. Was he … was he starting to tear up? "… With what happened to her, I feel that her memories and the time with her are more important to remember. Because I have to, because … I need to. Because I'm not sure anyone else will be able to…"

Oh God, he was really, actually crying now! "What? Donna? What about Donna?" Rose wanted to hold him, but he grimaced a smile and pulled himself together.

"Ah. Yes, I … I thought you knew. Silly, really – how could you?" He took a deep breath and then he told her what it means to have a Time Lord's mind inside a human brain, that it had been breaking her into pieces, eating away inside her even while they'd all been on that beach in Norway and said goodbye. "So. I don't know what really happened, because I wasn't there, but I know what I would have done because we both… There can't be a universe without Donna Noble, you know? There just should not ever be! So I'm assuming – I'm rather certain, that he … walled that all up. Took her memories away, put them behind walls so high and strong that nearly nothing could go through. All of them."

"What? All? But… like nothing?" How would that even make sense? "Wouldn't that leave her … an empty shell?" Surely, that couldn't be better than death?

"No, no, of course not… not all. But every single one that included the Doctor. Every one. So… she lost two years, lost all" he had to stop to wipe his face again and regain a sense of control. "- all of what she achieved. The DoctorDonna couldn't exist anymore, because it would kill Donna. Rip her to shreds. And that…" he looked at her and there was so much pain and sadness in his eyes that Rose just had to kneel down on the ground and hug him tightly, feel him bury his face in her hair. "She was my best friend, Rose. My very, very best friend. And I had – he had, but since I would have done the same, it doesn't matter – he had to wipe himself out of her life and had to take everything away she'd become. It's just so … _fucking_ unfair!"

For a while, he just sat there and breathed into her hair, a habit that never failed to make her feel cherished and special. In return, she kept her grip tight around his waist, whispering 'sorry, I'm so sorry' into the wool of his jumper, not sure if she was sorry for the other Donna, the other Doctor, him or about her own jealousy. Now that she knew, it felt really childish.

"Blimey," he said after some time. "These human bodies really expel a lot of fluids when emotions come to the mix. It's quite ridiculous how much water they waste just for being sad."

Rose snorted, amused. "Don't complain to me. I've had to deal with that a lot longer than you." She looked up, relieved to see a smile despite the red eyes and blotchy face. He was, she was secretly glad to know, not a pretty crier. "Feel better now?"

"Strange. Looking from the outside, humans aren't so different, except they really, really are. All those… emotions and urges and needs; uncontrollable, really. Inefficient, when you think about it. Waste of perfectly good hormones to just let them roam free and do as they please." He smiled at her, though, and kissed her. "Ah well. I'll get used to it, I guess. Can't be too difficult."

She returned the kiss but frowned. "So what – Time Lords don't have emotions?"

"Oh, of course they do. They just don't let them control everything and let the body act on every whimsical little feeling that comes by. We – they – just have control over most of the body's functions and can switch off things that are inconvenient. Come to think of it, the Doctor's probably a really bad example of a Time Lord, if people were to judge the species on him alone. He's always been quite bad at fitting the mould." He tugged her upward to sit her in his lap. The chair groaned but held, and Rose decided that she didn't care if it would break down later; right now, this was perfect. "He was head-over-heels for you, you know that, right?"

She nodded absently, couldn't help thinking about him all alone in that other universe. She'd been pretty – no, _very_ – angry at him for a while, him just deciding for her that she was better off in Pete's World than in his, putting a dummy-Doctor in her house to care for and play with without regards to her or the dummy-Doctor's feelings on the matter. The anger had faded, though, and right now she just felt horrible, imagining him to be without anyone, not even Donna. Had Rose known he would be alone, she wouldn't have let him dump her in Norway without a fight. No matter the consequences. Which was, of course, why he hadn't told her about Donna's fate, she supposed. With the knowledge that he would have his friend by his side and that he would be fine, she'd been able to get on with her life with all her family – minus Mickey, but that still hurt too much to think about right now – and a new, different Doctor. Dummy-Doctor or not, she couldn't quite make herself imagine not having this one by her side.

Knowing that Doctor Number 1 had deliberately set himself up for heartbreak was sad and a little bit daft, when she thought about it. "Idiot," she muttered and smiled when she felt _her_ Doctor chuckle.

"Yeah. Can't say I disagree with you there. He would probably agree with you, too. But… Well." He stopped, probably finding reasons for the parallel Doctor's actions. She didn't think there were many good ones, though. "But I can't really say I'm sorry he did as he did," her Doctor contemplated into her shoulder. "Wouldn't know what to do with myself without you."

"Aw, you'd be fine. Maybe not right away, but you're smart, confident and pretty." He preened and she laughed. "Someone would have found a use for you," she teased and then waited to see if he was really done with his emotional outburst.

When she was sure he had, she tried to bring him back on track. "I would still like to know the other reason." At his questioning look, she elaborated. "You know, for not talking about Martha."

"Ah." He shifted underneath Rose but didn't try to dislodge her. Good, she'd have hit him if he had. "Well. You know, when we met her first, we'd been alone for uh… a few weeks, maybe a bit more. Hard to say, really. You… you know, you were trapped here, and I – we – had decided not to have anyone in the Tardis for a while. But there was Martha, and she was just so amazing, and we took her along and tried to tell her – and convince ourselves, really – that it would be only one trip. But of course it wasn't, we took her on adventure after adventure and she saved our life three times in three trips. Well, okay, the thing with the Carrionites wasn't that dangerous but the sun… oooh, that was bad. Anyway. So we stumble along and suddenly she gets a key to the Tardis and then bam, we turn ourselves into a human – stupid, completely dumb idea and I wonder about the Tardis' sanity at the choice of time she set us in. I mean, who in their right minds chooses the year 1913, the year before World War One, as a good time to be human? Why not some boring little 1990 or early 3000s? Nope, she had to choose a time where someone with the wrong – what a daft concept, by the way, deciding one's worth and status on the completely unrelated colour of skin! Not that humanity is special in that regard – most species have some kind of speciism somewhere in their history, so I'm not blaming this on humanity alone. Oh – oh, maybe that's why she didn't think about it, because a Tardis wouldn't understand prejudice? Hm. Anyway – so, somehow she chose a time where Martha wouldn't have much of a choice but be a chambermaid! Martha! She was on her way to be a doctor! And … anyway. Thing is, she was amazing, Rose. So fantastic! She did all those things, helped us, trusted us, walked the Earth – and that's literally, mind – on nothing but a half-arsed plan and an itty-bitty string of hope. She saw terrible things, I can't even think about what that year had done to her, and there is no doubt that she's a proper hero and yet… yet somewhere, we'd failed to make her see how important she was to us. Not just the Earth, but to _us_, to the Doctor."

He pulled a face, incredulity and shame warring on it. "See, first time back in that hospital, the Doctor kissed her to transfer genetic material to her mouth so the Judoon would be distracted for just a little bit longer." Something on her face must have alarmed him, though whatever he thought it was Rose was just trying to get some sense into the string of memories he was throwing at her. "It didn't mean anything! But it had to be quite thorough, so … well. Big kiss. We _told her_ it didn't mean anything, made that quite clear, we thought, but… maybe we should have said it more than once? Because… well. But she said that she only went for humans anyway, and we believed her, and… well. Still. Because she had started to fancy us. And we… I think we knew. And maybe – probably – we should have addressed that at one point. We'd been cowardly, in that regard. We didn't want to lose her, you know? You understand? She was such a bright person, so wonderful, and we thought that she might leave if we said anything, and… and then it was too late, we were thrown out to the end of the universe and… Well. Too late then. I sometimes wish we could have given her what she wanted, but really. We didn't. Feel that way. And she … see, Rose, she did all those wonderful, brave, amazing things, helped us and was so … just so beautiful and smart and good. And when she walked out, you know what she gave as the most important reason?"

There was a pause until she realized he was actually waiting for an answer. Rose shook her head.

"Not her family, who had suffered during that year and needed her and which would have been more than enough reason to stay on Earth. Not her own safety, which – truly – would have been a smart choice. But no. She said that I – we – didn't _see_ her. That we never looked at her the way she wanted to be looked at, and that… that hurt. You know? Because even as a Time Lord, you can't force yourself to be in love, and if that was all she took from the time with us, if that's what stuck with her when she'd been nothing but great, then blimey, what have we done to her? She'd _carried our soul in a pocket-watch_ – literally! – and carried the world on her shoulders for a whole year while we sat in a golden cage and did nothing. And yet she didn't see that as being as important as some alien bloke not looking at her the right way. How can someone so intelligent and bright not see her own worth? How could it be that we never noticed what our cowardice did to her until it was too late?"

The Doctor sighed and put his chin on Rose's shoulder. "I fear, though I'll never know, she will always think of all her achievements as being 'not enough'. We saw her, we _saw her_, I promise we did! Her brightness and her skills and her beauty and her everything. But with her heart, we were careless. We hurt her, made her feel small when she was, in truth, bigger than she could ever believe."

"Bigger on the inside", Rose murmured and heard him chortle.

"Yes, quite right. Much bigger on the inside. So. I think that's probably the biggest reason why I don't talk about her that often. Because I feel like every memory of our adventures is tainted by the realization that maybe she wasn't doing all those things for the right reasons. Though I know it's daft, she would have done all those things anyway, I know she would."

Silence fell between them. Rose sat sideways on his legs, watching the birds collect material for their nests and he was probably doing the same. Or maybe he was staring into a past with a bright-eyed, beautiful woman who, for reasons Rose could understand _very_ well, had fallen hard for this amazing spark of life she was sitting on. Or rather, the original spark.

She tried to call up Martha's face. Dark skin, beautiful features, strong will. A very decisive personality, from what Rose remembered. If he hadn't told her, she never would've guessed that Martha had a crush on the Doctor, or that she had self-worth-issues. Maybe time had been a healer, maybe finding her own path in life – one that hadn't necessarily sat well with the Doctor, and maybe that had been the point – had helped her find enough distance to see beyond the hero-worship people around the Doctor tended to fall into. Rose had done the same, though her first Doctor had been less like a bright, shiny beacon than the second Doctor had been. Her first Doctor had been hard angles and a harsh past, barely hiding his anger and pain and yet she'd fallen in love with him anyway. And unbelievably, he'd fallen in love with her in return.

But Rose could see how people who met the second Doctor first would inevitably be dazzled by him, by his wild hair and big eyes, his loud mouth and his overwhelming smile. The first Doctor had smiled just as brightly, but not many people had seen him do so. The second Doctor would light up a room with his grin alone and Rose was well aware of his magnetic personality. That he'd attracted someone just as bright, someone shiny and strong like Martha was no surprise.

"She didn't meet the northern Doctor, who hadn't found his smile, but the shiny one." Rose hadn't wanted to say it out loud, but now that she had she didn't mind the words being out there. Her Doctor looked up in surprise, question in his eyes. "And I bet you – he – dazzled her with his smile and his Tardis and his brightness until she was overwhelmed and couldn't help but fall in love."

"Hm. Maybe. Though in all fairness, we never encouraged her to believe there was a chance at more than friendship. Do I wish she had stayed with us? Well. Yes, I suppose. For selfish reasons, very much yes. For her own sake, I know it was right that she left us, that she stepped out of the Tardis and decided to stay on Earth and walk the slow path, care for her family, find her own future. What she'd been through…" he shook his head in a mixture of amazement and sorrow, "She'd had to be so strong, had to see so much death and destruction and we couldn't help her. We put all that on her shoulders because there was no other way, but it was still cruel. If I had a wish free, I think I'd wish that experience away from her." Lowly, barely audibly, he added "wouldn't mind that same wish for us, either."

"But," he continued, "I'm so grateful to have met her, have travelled with her and for calling her my friend. She is, was and will forever be my friend, and even if it might have been better for her sake, I would never want to undo our time together. Too selfish, I reckon."

It was, she thought. It was selfish, but oh-so-understandable. She was guilty of the same, considering the way she'd carelessly played with Mickey's heart until he'd had forced a stop to it. The same way Martha had forced a stop, though she'd been braver than Mickey, had been able to leave a line open to the Doctor and not vanished in a parallel world to be able to build his own life. "I wish I could have met her properly," Rose murmured. "Do you think we would have gotten along?"

He leaned back so he could look at her better and waggled his head. "Well. I quiver at the idea, but yes, I think you would. Like you and Sarah Jane, you two would have probably hit a bit of a problem in the beginning…"

Rose laughed. "What, you think you're so irresistible that we'd have fought over you? Oh, the cheek!"

Glaring back, he raised his voice over her teasing so he could continue the sentence "… in the beginning, as I said! But you're both brilliant and yes, I think you'd have been good friends."

Despite the teasing, Rose thought that she and Martha wouldn't have had much in common if the Doctor hadn't stepped into their lives. Martha had been a student, was a doctor, even! And what did Rose have? A flat shared with her mom, a dead father, a job at Henricks and not even her A-levels. What would they even talk about? Shows on the telly?

"Good," was what she said. She missed Mickey, suddenly. Missed someone she could talk to about silly things like shows on the telly who wasn't also her partner in any other parts of her life. Shireen had been that friend, back on original Earth, and Rose had simply let her go when her life turned upside-down. There'd been Mickey, her mom and the Doctor, and nobody else. Jack, for a brief time. In this world, she had even less. Well, she would count Jake as her friend, and Donna probably, and she'd gained a father and a little brother so it actually put her in the lead. But not having Mickey as _her_ friend, as the one who was with her only because of Rose, not because of someone else (the Doctor), that was quite a blow. If she wanted to go to the pub, she'd have to take the Doctor – which was not a good idea because he got bored too easily and didn't like beer and got whiney after half an hour. Or well. …Donna. Donna was older by a few years, they didn't have much to talk about that didn't include the Doctor, and talking about him with his new best friend was just not right, Rose thought. But who said she'd have to talk about the Doctor? There were other subjects, maybe work or maybe her family or maybe just really stupid shows on the telly. Cooking? Well, why not. Why bloody well not!

She'd put her life on hold for a bit longer than she should have. There'd always been that hope that one day, she could go back to the other world and have her old life back again. Though thinking about it now, Rose would say that even there she'd have needed a few more friends. When it came down to it, she really only had Mickey.

Making a decision, she stood from her spot on his leg, folding the blanket and pulling her clothes back in a semblance of order.

"Where are you going?"

"For my phone. I'm going to the pub, with Donna, and you're not coming," she grinned. Then went back to kiss him on the forehead, because she didn't like him look hurt. "Next time, Doctor. Let me have this one for now, right?"

"Fine," he pouted. "I'll just read some more Harry Copper. Have I ever told you about Mr Copper from Sto? You would have liked him."

"I bet." She'd dialled and was listening to the ring-tone. "Tell me next time, alright? Oh, Donna? Hey, it's Rose. Say, how about a night out with me and just me? Yes? Brilliant! The Owl? Seven-ish? Fantastic!"

With a new spring in her step, she went to her bedroom, distantly aware that the Doctor had picked up his book again. She didn't worry about him being alone – he wasn't a puppy, and he'd already found something else to occupy himself with when she was ready to go. Annoying as it sometimes was, finding things to do for the Doctor was never a problem. If all else failed, he'd go and tinker with his 'secret project' that Rose hadn't been able to find out anything about. She didn't have to live in his back-pocket, and neither did he have to cling to her skirt – which she didn't wear that often, for practical reasons.

Maybe life could be more than just waiting for something threatening Earth. Maybe domestic wasn't so bad, after all.


End file.
